Three Hermits

Nels Andrews

Words by WB Yeats

Story

I was on my way back to Brooklyn from a wake in Manhattan,late one night being a little syrupy with my reflexes, i tripped on a stack of books someone had left out on the street, I fumbled down and picked up a book of poems by yeats, and opened to this page, a really lyrical meditation on life. It haunted me for weeks until a melody kinda came all at once.

Lyrics

three old hermits took the airby a cold and desolate seathe first was muttering a prayerthe second rummaged for a flea;on a windy stone, the third,giddy with his hundredth year,sang unnoticed like a bird

la la la la la la

“Though the door of death is nearand what waits behind the door,three times in a single dayI slept upright on the shore”so the first but now the second,“We’re given but what we’ve earnedso it’s plain to be discerned”

la la la la la la

“That the shades of holy menwho have failed being weak of will,pass the door of birth againand are plagued by crowds untilthey have the passion to escape.”moaned the other, “they are throwninto some most fearful shape.”but the second mocked his moan:“They are not chained to anythinghaving loved God once, but maybe,to a poet or a kingor some witty lovely lady.”

he caught and cracked his flea, the third,giddy with his hundredth bird,sang unnoticed like a bird